Rublev and Michael Harding Oils on Stretched Oil primed gesso canvas, 91.5” x 61” plus frame size.

Being of Light translates perception into luminosity. The figure, rendered in the faintest tonal register of cream, rose, and pearl, appears almost incorporeal, a form of light made visible.

The delicate modulation between skin and atmosphere abolishes contour; edges dissolve, and the figure becomes both subject and radiance.

The pose is one of inward poise, the head inclined and eyes closed as though turned toward an unseen illumination.

The palette’s control of temperature, the subtle negotiation between warm and cool tones, sustains the image in a state of suspension, a balance between embodiment and transcendence.

This painting belongs to a lineage that extends from the spiritualised figuration of Leonardo’s sfumato to the quiet transcendence of Georges de La Tour. Its sensibility is modern, not devotional but phenomenological. It explores what light does to being: how visibility itself becomes a condition of consciousness.

A passage from Rilke’s Book of Hours echoes the sentiment:

“You, darkness, from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires that fence the world.”

Here, light is not simply illumination but the trace of what has been touched by darkness — a presence born of quiet endurance. Being of Light is thus a meditation on grace, perception, and the fragile radiance of existence itself.

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